During the seven years I lived in my present home, I have sat on the
front porch and looked across the Susquehanna river to a bluff just
beyond the P. & E. Railroad. White tombstones, looming up above the
weeds, like the great white teeth of Death, indicated that human bodies
had been laid there to rest, while the struggle with others continued for
a little while longer. Mrs. Haiden often spoke of going over to visit the
spot. To her an old graveyard appeals with stronger force than the most
beautiful garden of flowers. Three years ago, when we visited Washington,
the wise old faces of the Senators and Representatives of the people
did not appeal to her. Neither did the political stench of the Capitol.
Arlington cemetery and the Egyptian mummies in the National Museum took
her fancy. They were flowers handed down to us from a former generation,
as they say in the Declaration of Independence.
Well, Mrs. Haiden’s curiosity to visit the old Quiggle cemetery overcame
my laziness, and one fine Sunday we persuaded Professor Stevenson to
accompany us, and we crossed the river at the ferry and walked through
the fields to the place of interest. The cemetery is quite an old burial
ground for this neighborhood. We could not determine how old, because the
first graves made there were marked only with mountain sand stones, and
only a few of them bore an inscription.
One of the graves was marked with a granite monument and surrounded
with an iron fence, and inside the enclosure was an iron bench, just as
though some loved one left behind would often come there and sit in the
solitude and commune with the dead man under the sod. It was a beautiful
and tender suggestion, and if the dead could really send back a message
to the waiting ones, how much of death’s mystery could be cleared away.
But aching hearts and the longings of yearning souls have failed to bring
back even a whispered message from the land beyond the shadow line. The
dead cannot talk to us any more than the living can talk to the dead. The
wires are all down between the living and the dead—all down and out of
use, and when we sit at the graves of our loved ones, all we can do is to
recall the past; if time is a circle, then heaven lies in the past, as
well as in the future, and the needle of our mental compass always points
into the great beyond, no difference where we look.
On one mountain stone we found the figures 1803, and the name, Andrew K.
Rinder. He had been buried one hundred and seven years—before the war
of 1812 was fought between our country and Great Britain. The roar of
the cannons could not disturb his rest. The big trains on the “Pennsy”
go thundering by only two hundred feet away, but Rinder does not hear
them. He never saw a steam locomotive nor a railroad track. These modern
inventions have crowded in upon his resting place, but he is done with
the world—he does not care. He lived his little life and lies in his
little grave on this lonely little hill. Perhaps we will be as thoroughly
forgotten in a century from now as Andrew K. Rinder. It has been over
a hundred years since that name was set up in printed letters—perhaps
it will never appear again. Did some mysterious force lead me there to
resurrect that long forgotten name? Who can say? Life is a plan and a
purpose; we move as the wheels in a clock, urged by a power to which we
are attached by unseen hands.
On our return, we ran across a private burial ground we had known nothing
about. Here lie the two generations of Stech’s. John Stech was buried in
1815. His sons and daughters lie sleeping at his side. The sons never
married, and the name of Stech died out of the neighborhood. Not a man
bearing that good old German name is known in this county. The valuable
farm has fallen into the hands of strangers, and the private burial place
is overgrown with briars and trees, and the top of the marker fallen to
the ground. Nobody cares. These two bachelor brothers should have married
and left some one to carry their name and to care for their graves.
I do not advocate Rooseveltian families—the age for large families has
passed away—but I do believe every sane man should have a life behind
in place of the one he takes away when he steps out. These forgotten
and neglected graves in the Stech burial ground show that the Stechs
neglected their duty during life. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” is true
in all phases of earthly existence.
In less than a century ninety-nine per cent of the world’s dead are
forgotten on earth. We, too, will be forgotten. Is there a record kept
elsewhere? Are there more durable tablets than these rough mountain
stones and granite?